The opposition of Votic case forms is provided both by case markers
and consonant alternations in the stem. However, not all nouns have
alternations in the stem, and four of the grammatical cases--the
nominative, genitive, partitive and illative--do not have clearly
distinctive case markers in the singular. The nominative does not have a
marker in general; the genitive has lost the final *-n and presents a
bare stem; one of the variants of the partitive marker (-a/-a) merges
with the final a/a vowel of the stem; and the illative can have an
unmarked short form (except in monosyllabic nouns). (1) As a result, the
paradigms of many Votic nouns contain several forms that look very
similar. The feature that could distinguish these forms is the length of
the final vowel, (2) but the existing sources on Votic give confusingly
varying opinions on this matter.

In the first Votic grammar, written by Ahlqvist (1856 : 32), the
nominative singular forms usually end in a short vowel (e.g. kattila
'cauldron:NOM', silta 'bridge:NOM'), while in the
genitive and partitive, the final vowel is long (3) (kattila
'cauldron:GEN', silla 'bridge:GEN'; kattila
'cauldron:PART', silta 'bridge:PART'). The illative
forms, which are presented in Ahlqvist (1856) in the long variant (i.e.
with the marker-(s)se) have a long vowel before this marker (kattilase
'cauldron:iLL', siltasse 'bridge:iLL').

In the dictionary by Tsvetkov (1995), written at the beginning of
the 20th century, the nominative has a short final vowel or no final
vowel at all, the partitive usually ends in a short vowel (with some
exceptions), and the genitive and illative show variation (sometimes
rather confusing) in the length of the final vowel between different
lexemes: ein 'hay:NOM', eina' 'hay:GEN/ill',
eina 'hay:PART'; kana 'fish:NOM/gen/part', kanase
'fish:iLL'; tara 'garden:NOM/GEN', tara
'garden:PART', tarase 'garden:iLL'; vasar
'hammer:NOM', vasara 'hammer:GEN', vasara
'hammer:PART', vasara(se) 'hammer:iLL'.

A grammar by ArpaHaT (2007 : 45) states that the genitive and
illative have a prolonged final vowel, the partitive forms with the -a
marker end in a long vowel (the author gives the example kanaa
'fish:PART', but elsewhere in the same grammar only the form
kanna is found), and the nominative has a short final vowel.

In MapKyc, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] 2011 nouns with
stem-final a/a have nominative forms ending in a reduced vowel (except
for words of CVCV (4) structure, where the final vowel is short but not
reduced). The genitive, partitive and illative forms have a short but
not reduced final vowel: tsula 'village:NOM/GEN', tsulla
'village:PART/iLL', seine 'wall:NOM', seina
'wall:GEN/part/ill'. Nouns with stem-final vowels other than
a/a have a short final vowel in the nominative, genitive and illative
forms: ohtogo 'evening:NOM/GEN/iLL' ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII] 2011 : 277, 285, 295, 320-321).

Viitso's doctoral thesis contains a chapter on phonetics and
phonology of the Vaipooli Votic varieties (5) based on data collected in
1958-1961 and 1976 (see Bmhtco 1982 : 228-230). It argues that there is
an opposition of short and long vowels both in initial and non-initial
syllables, but notes that in words with a long first syllable the
non-initial long vowel is usually pronounced as half-long. The research
also states that Votic short vowels in the second syllable become
half-short or quantitatively and qualitatively reduced after a long
initial syllable. (6)

One may try to explain such variation in interpretations by
dialectal features, recent changes in phonetics and correspondingly
morphology, peculiarities of the transcription, and other reasons. In
most cases verification of the data is impossible or highly problematic
(there are no recordings from the 19th century, and recordings from the
first half of the 20th century are of poor quality). However, the recent
data presented in ArpaHaT 2007 and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 2011
can be verified.

It should be noted that until recently there were no experimental
phonetic studies based on the Votic material. The only exception is the
paper by Ariste (1942), where he measured the length of segments in some
words. The research was based on the data recorded in 1934 from a Votic
male speaker (the Central Votic dialect, Pummala village). The main
results concerning the length of vowels in non-initial syllables are
(Ariste 1942 : 45-47): a) in disyllabic words with a short initial
syllable the second vowel is longer than the first; (7) the vowel of the
second syllable is longer in open syllables than in closed (the average
length is 146.9 ms (8) and 106.2 ms, respectively); b) the vowel in the
second syllable is shorter if the initial syllable is long (the average
length is 104.6 ms); the second syllable vowel is shorter after a long
vowel or diphthong in the initial syllable than after a combination of a
short vowel and a consonant; c) non-initial syllables can contain long
vowels; in disyllabic words the average length of a second syllable long
vowel is 197.5 ms; d) short vowels in word-final position can be longer
than short vowels in the initial syllable; in words like siga the second
vowel is actually half-long; e) the average length of short final vowels
in tri-syllabic words is 78.9 ms. I will compare Ariste's results
with my own in Section 5.6.

The main aim of my research is to determine whether the length of
the final vowel distinguishes the case forms of nouns in contemporary
Votic, and if it does, what is the correlation between the length and
the case form. The research deals also with a morphological problem,
namely the syncretism in Votic nominal paradigms. I will analyse four
case forms that are most inclined to merge: the nominative, genitive,
partitive and illative singular. (9)

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the
experiments. In Section 3 nouns with stems ending in a/a are analysed.
Section 4 presents a similar analysis for nouns with other stem-final
vowels. Section 5 discusses quantitative and qualitative differences of
forms, syncretism of cases, specific characteristics of the illative,
foot isochrony and the impact of the research results on the
transcriptional conventions. Section 6 contains general conclusions.

2. Data and methods

The material used in the paper was recorded from three speakers of
Luuditsa Votic (10) in 2011-2013: a male born in 1928 (Speaker 1); a
female born in 1928 (Speaker 2) and a male born in 1921 (Speaker 3). The
first two speakers were born in the Liivtsula village (which is
currently a part of Luuditsa). The Liivtsula variety possibly had
slightly less Ingrian influence than the proper Luuditsa variety.
Speaker 3 was born in Luuditsa. After World War II he lived mostly in
St. Petersburg but visited his native village regularly.

The age of the native speakers affects their ability to work as
informants, and consequently there was no possibility to conduct a
comprehensive phonetic investigation of different vowels in various
types of nouns. Thus, the object of research was significantly limited.

1. Only nouns without grade alternations were analysed (grade
alternation distinguishes the genitive from other cases: poiga?a (11)
'boy:GEN'--poika?a 'boy:PART/ill').

2. A significant part of the research considers nouns with
stem-final a/a (Section 3), because other stem-final vowels do not merge
with the partitive marker (-a/-a), cf. kanna?a
'fish:PART/ill', but pollua 'dust:PART' -pollu?u
'dust:iLL'. However, a number of nouns with other stem-final
vowels are also analysed in the paper as they seem not to oppose the
nominative to the other forms via the qualitative reduction (lenno?o
'toy:NOM/GEN/ILL', but vinna 'woo1:nom'--vinna?a
'woo1:GEN/PART/ILL').

3. Only several morphophonological structures were analysed. For
the nouns with stem-final a/a there are four disyllabic structures and
one trisyllabic: CVCV (type kana- (12) 'fish'), CVCCV (type
nagna-'nail'), CVVCV (type naiva'ship'), CVCV (type
pima-'milk') and CVCVCV (type vasara-'hammer'). (13)
For the nouns with stem-final vowels other than a/a the analysed
structures were: CVCV (type tano-'house'), CVCV (type
pollu-' dust'), CVVCV (type kaivo-' well'), CVCCCV
(type kirstu-' chest') and CVCVCV (type pikari 'shot
glass'). There is some difference between the sets of structures
for a/a and non a/a words, because for some structures it was
problematic to find words with the target final vowel that were known by
the speakers.

The questionnaire with the test words for recording was composed in
the following way:

(a) it consisted of simple sentences in Russian to be translated
into Votic by native speakers;

(b) the test words were always in the sentence final position;

(c) each sentence provided a context that unambiguously defined the
case of the noun: for example, This is a big fish (NOM), He ate one fish
(GEN), I do not have fish (part), Add some salt to the fish (ILL). An
agreeing adjective with clearly distinguished case forms was an
additional key that guaranteed that there was no confusion of forms.
(14) Cf. se on sur kana?a 'This is a big:NOM fish:NOM'--mia
sein sure kana?a 'I ate a big:GEN fish:GEN'.

The generally accepted methodology of phonetic experiments
recommends recording several pronunciations of every sentence/word. My
experience shows that old people often forget to repeat the sentence,
and if the researcher keeps on demanding such repetition, the repeated
sentence will be pronounced too fast or, inversely, in an unnatural
manner. (15) Thus, if the speaker did not repeat the sentence, it
appeared more productive to change the context in a way that did not
affect the test words, e.g. I ate one fish--He ate one fish--We ate one
fish, etc. In this case, the speech tempo and naturalness were
preserved.

The recordings were made with an Edirol R-09HR digital recorder and
a stereo microphone (Edirol CS-15 or Sony ECM-MS907) at a 16 bit 48000
Hz sampling rate. More than 1500 pronunciations were segmented and
analysed in Praat (Boersma, Weenink 2014).

3. Nouns with stem-final a/a

This section presents the results of acoustic measurements for
several types of word structures. Five subsections correspond to the
five analysed structures. Each subsection contains two tables and a
figure.

Tables 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 show the average length (Average), standard
deviations (StDev) of the segments in the foot, and the number of tokens
(N). The last two lines give:

Figures 1-5 compare the average length of the final vowel in each
case form for every speaker.

Tables 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 present the results of a statistical
analysis testing the effect of the case form on the length of the final
vowel. The single-factor ANOVA was calculated for every possible pair of
case forms (i.e. nominative vs genitive, nominative vs partitive,
genitive vs partitive, etc.). The tables are divided into two parts. The
left part (separated with a bold line) contains pairs of case forms with
the same segmental structure. It means that the length of the final
vowel might be the only feature that distinguishes the two forms in a
pair. The right part of every table contains pairs of case forms that
have other differences (the quality of the final vowel or the gemination
of the second consonant), and therefore the length of the final vowel
cannot be the only feature distinguishing the forms in a pair. Every
cell in a table shows the statistical significance of the difference
between the two case forms: "+++" stands for p < 0.001
(very significant), "+" stands for p < 0.01 (significant),
"+?" for 0.01 [less than or equal to] p [less than or equal
to] 0.05 (possibly significant; the exact p-value is given in
parentheses), and "--" for p > 0.05 (not significant).

A short discussion of the results of the measurements is given in
each subsection after the tables.

3.1. Structure CVCV (type kana-)

In this structure, the nominative and the genitive forms have the
same CVCV structure (kana?a 'fish:NOM/GEN'), while the
partitive and illative forms both have a geminated second consonant
(kannala 'fish:PART/ILL').

Several observations can be made on the basis of the data from
Table 1 and Table 2.

1. The average length of the final vowel decreases in the direction
nom > GEN > PART > ILL (the only exception is the illative form
from Speaker 3).

2. There is no statistically significant difference between the
length of final vowels (V2) in the nominative and genitive forms.

3. There is no statistically significant difference between the
length of V2 in the partitive and illative for Speakers 1, but for
Speaker 2 the final vowel in the illative is significantly shorter than
in the partitive. Speaker 3 (unlike two other speakers) has a longer V2
in the illative (statistically, this difference is possibly
significant).

4. The length of the final vowel demonstrates a significant
difference between the nominative and partitive (for all speakers) and
between the nominative and illative (for Speakers 1 and 2).

5. The length of the final vowel in the genitive and partitive is
not significantly different for Speakers 1 and 2 and is possibly
significant for Speaker 3. This means that the length of V2 does not
depend crucially on the structure of the form (CVCV vs CVCV). (16)

6. The difference between the length of V2 in the genitive and
illative forms depends on the speaker: there is no statistically
significant difference for Speaker 3, a very significant difference for
Speaker 2 and a possibly significant difference for Speaker 1.

7. V1 and C are always shorter in the illative than in the
partitive (for all speakers).

8. Speaker 3 has longer vowels than Speakers 1 and 2. This tendency
is general (i.e. it concerns nouns of all structures) so I will not
mention it in further discussion.

9. The illative form shows the strongest divergence in the length
of the final vowel between the speakers.

3.2. Structure CVCCV (type nagna-)

In this structure, the nominative form differs from the three other
forms in the quality of the final vowel: nagna 'nail:NOM' vs
nagna?a 'nail:GEN/part/ill'. (17)

1. Here, unlike in the CVCV structures, V2 in the nominative forms
is considerably shorter than in all other case forms.

2. There is no statistically significant difference between the
lengths of final vowels in case forms other than the nominative.

3. In the illative, Speakers 1 and 2 have shorter V1 and CC than in
other cases. This difference is very significant for CC (p < 0.001),
but not for V1.

It is worth mentioning that the length of V2 in the partitive and
illative forms of the nagna-type is rather close to the length of V2 in
the partitive and illative forms of the kana-type (i.e. the forms with
the CVCV structure). For the genitive forms (that have very different
structures: CVCV in the kana-type vs CVCCV in the nagna-type) the
results depend on the speaker: there is a statistically significant
difference for Speaker 3 (166 vs 131 ms, p < 0.01), possibly
significant difference for Speaker 1 (124 vs 113 ms, p = 0.036) and no
difference for Speaker 2 (131 vs 119 ms, p > 0.05). Cf. also section
5.5 on foot isochrony.

3.3. Structure CVVCV (type naiva-)

In this structure the first vowel is a diphthong. All the test
words in the dataset contain diphthongs ending in i. Other types of
diphthongs can be slightly longer, so I did not use them in the
experiments in order not to increase the degree of variation in the
length of the initial vowels.

1. In this structure the final vowel in the nominative is again
significantly shorter than in other cases.

2. The length of the final vowel in other cases depends on the
speaker. Speaker 1 has almost the same length of V2 in the genitive,
partitive and illative forms. Speaker 2 has a longer V2 in the
partitive, which has a possibly significant difference from V2 in the
genitive and illative. For Speaker 3, V2 in the illative is
significantly longer than in the genitive and partitive.

3. The diphthong is always longer in the nominative than in other
case forms. For Speakers 1 and 2 this difference is statistically
significant only between V1 in the nominative and illative (202 vs 183
ms, p = 0.012; 202 vs 170 ms, p < 0.01). For Speaker 3, a significant
difference is observed between V1 in the nominative and
genitive/partitive forms (310 vs 237 ms, p < 0.001 for the nom-gen
pair; 310 vs 248 ms, p < 0.01 for the nom-part pair). (18)

4. There is no noticeable shortening of V1 or C in the illative
forms of all speakers.

3.4. Structure CVCV (type pima-)

1. In this structure the final vowel in the nominative is also
significantly shorter is than in other cases.

2. The final vowels in other cases do not demonstrate any
significant difference in their length. The only exception is the
possibly significant difference between V2 in the genitive and illative
for Speaker 2, as there is a shortening of the vowel in the illative.

3. In the illative forms of Speaker 2 there is also a shortening of
V1 and C. They are significantly shorter than those in the nominative (p
< 0.001 and p < 0.01 correspondingly). The difference with the
partitive is possibly significant (p = 0.026 and p = 0.020
correspondingly) and the difference with the genitive is significant
only for V1 (p < 0.01).

3.5. Structure CVCVCV (type vasara-)

1. In trisyllabic words the final vowel in the nominative is
shorter than in other cases, and this difference is always highly
significant (p < 0.001).

2. The difference between the final vowels in other case forms
depends on the speaker. For Speaker 1, there is no statistically
significant difference. For Speaker 2, there is a statistically
significant difference between the genitive and illative and a possibly
significant difference between the partitive and illative (due to the
shorter vowel in the illative). For Speaker 3, there is a possibly
significant difference between the partitive and illative (due to the
longer vowel in the illative).

3. The penultimate vowel in the nominative is always longer than in
other forms. However, only for Speaker 2 is this difference
statistically significant.

4. The final vowel in the nominative is always shorter in this
trisyllabic structure than it is in disyllabic structures discussed
above.

3.6. Nouns with stem-final a/a: summary

For nouns with stem-final a/a the main results of the analysis are
the following:

1. There is a reduction of the final vowel in the nominative forms
in all structures except CVCV, and this reduction is not only
qualitative (see

Section 5.2) but also quantitative: the difference in the length is
always statistically significant.

2. In CVCV structure, there is no opposition of a prolonged
(half-long) vowel in the nominative and originally long vowels in other
case forms.

3. There is individual variation in the system of oppositions of
case forms that depends both on the structure and the particular
speaker. Such variations are not typical for Speaker 1 but are very
common for Speaker 2 (she opposes the partitive vs illative in the
kana-type and the genitive vs illative in the vasara-type, and possibly
distinguishes the partitive from genitive and illative in the
naiva-type, genitive from illative in the pima-type and the partitive
from illative in the vasara-type). The "purest" type, which
does not display variation between speakers, is the nagna-type. Speaker
3 has less individual variation than Speaker 2.

4. Speaker 3 has a slower speech rate, so in his data all segments
are longer. Thus, the comparison of absolute lengths of the final vowels
between Speaker 3 and other speakers is not very informative.

5. Apart from CVCV, the analysed structures do not demonstrate a
consistent correlation between the structure and the length of the final
vowel. The only exception is the CVCV structure of Speaker 3, where the
final vowel is in most cases longer than in other structures. But even
with this structure there is no consistency: the illative in CVVCV is
longer than in C V CV.

4. Nouns with stem-final vowels other than a/a

In this section nouns with the stem ending in a vowel other than
a/a are analysed. This study is preliminary as the length of the vowel
can depend on its quality, and nouns that differ either by the structure
or by the quality of the stem-final vowel should be analysed separately.
However, it is impossible to find Votic nouns with all stem-final vowels
for every structure that do not have degree alternations and are present
in the limited vocabulary of contemporary native speakers. Thus, in the
current paper only several types of nouns were analysed. These types are
listed in Table 11. One of the types (pollu-) combines nouns with
different stem vowels (u and o), while others are homogeneous from the
point of view of the final vowel quality. Types kaivo-and kirstu-contain
only one lexeme (i.e. many pronunciations of the same word were
recorded).

These data were collected from two speakers (Speaker 1 and Speaker
2). As was mentioned in Section 2, nouns with a stem-final vowel other
than a/a always distinguish the partitive singular from other case forms
(the partitive marker a/a forms a diphthong with the stem vowel, e.g.
pollua 'dust:PART', kaivoa 'well:PART'). Thus, only
three case forms are considered in this section: the nominative,
genitive and illative singular.

The data are presented in the same way as in Section 3: Tables 12,
14, 16,18 and 20 show the average length and standard deviation of the
segments; Figures 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 compare the average length of the
final vowels; Tables 13, 15, 17, 19 and 20 present the results of the
statistical analysis.

4.1. Structure CVCV (type tano-)

In this structure, the illative form differs from the two others in
the gemination of the second consonant: tano?o 'house:NOM/gen'
vs tanno?o 'house:iLL'.

It is easy to notice that the main tendencies found for the CVCV
type of nouns with the stem-final a/a (Section 3.1) are also valid for
the tano-type: --there is a decrease of V2 length in the direction nom
> gen > ill;

--there is no statistically significant difference between the
length of V2 in the nominative and genitive;

--for both speakers there is a statistically significant difference
between the length of V2 in the nominative and illative (which are
structurally different due to gemination in the illative).

--the difference between the length of V2 in the genitive and
illative is possibly significant for Speaker 1 and significant for
Speaker 2.

4.2. Structure CVCV (type pollu-)

Unlike the tano-type, this and the following types (sections
4.3.-4.5.) have the same structure in the nominative, genitive and
partitive: pollu?u 'dust:NOM/gen/ill'.

1. It can be clearly seen that the length of the final vowel in the
nominative is significantly smaller than that in the genitive and
illative. The average length of the V2 in the nominative is practically
the same as in the nagna-type (Section 3.2) for Speaker 2 (76 ms vs 71
ms), while Speaker 1 has a longer vowel in the pollu-type (80 ms vs 65
ms). Thus, the presence of the final vowel reduction in the nominative
is certain, but the degree of this reduction can vary.

2. Final vowels in the genitive and illative do not demonstrate any
significant differences in length.

3. There is no shortening of V1 or C in the illative (unlike in the
nagnatype).

4. In the illative forms, the geminate is much shorter for Speaker
2 than for Speaker 1, and Speaker 2 has a considerable variation in the
length of the geminate.

5. The geminate in the nominative is longer than in the genitive or
illative. This difference is possibly significant for Speaker 2 but for
Speaker 1 a possibly significant difference is attested only between the
nominative and genitive.

4.3. Structure CVVCV (type kaivo-)

1. In this type Speaker 2 has an obvious reduction of the final
vowel in the nominative. However, for Speaker 1 this reduction is not so
evident. The difference is significant between the nominative and
genitive, but not between the nominative and illative. The average
length of V2 in the nominative is much bigger in this type than in the
naiva-type (96 ms vs 56 ms).

2. For both speakers, there is no statistically significant
difference between the length of V2 in the genitive and illative.

4.4. Structure CVCCCV (type kirstu-)

1. Speaker 2 has a reduced final vowel in the nominative. Although
Speaker 1 also has a shorter vowel in the nominative compared to the
other cases, this difference is very small and is not statistically
significant. The length of V2 in the nominative (Speaker 2) is not very
stable (the standard deviation is 26 ms).

2. For both speakers there is no significant difference between the
length of final vowels in the genitive and illative.

4.5. Structure CVCVCV (type pikari-)

1. The final vowel in the nominative is shorter than in the
genitive and illative. This difference is statistically significant but
only marginally: for Speaker 1 it is 16 ms (nominative vs genitive) and
18 ms (nominative vs illative), for Speaker 2 it is 15 ms (nominative vs
genitive) and 28 ms (nominative vs illative).

2. There is no significant difference between the lengths of V3 in
the genitive and illative for Speaker 1, while for Speaker 2 this
difference is possibly significant (the final vowel in the illative is
slightly longer than in the genitive).

4.6. Nouns with stem-final vowels other than a/a: summary

In general, both categories of nouns--with stem-final a/a and with
other stem-final vowels--demonstrate the same tendency: in the
nominative the final vowel is shorter than in other case forms. The
exception is the CVCV structure where the distinction between the
genitive forms with the originally long vowel and the nominative forms
with the originally half-long vowel is completely lost.

However, nouns with stem-final vowels other than a/a have some
specific characteristics:

--often the difference between the reduced and non-reduced vowels
is small (CVCVCV structure), vague (Speaker 1, CVVCV structure) or even
lost (Speaker 1, CVCCCV structure);

--there is no obvious correlation between the structure and the
length of the final vowel (apart from CVCV).

Summing up, I can say that in nouns with stem-final vowels other
than a/a the reduction of final vowels in the nominative is not fully
consistent. This might reflect the tendency to avoid the distinction
between reduced and full vowels, as is observed in the Jogopera variety
of Votic, see Kuznetsova, Fedotov 2013.

5. Discussion

5.1. Reduction of final vowels: a quantitative aspect

Figure 11 presents the comparative length of the final vowel in the
nominative for all analysed structures, and Table 22 compares the length
of the final vowel in the nominative, genitive and illative forms in
same three structures (CVCV, CVVCV and CVCVCV) for a/a and non-a/a
stems. The rightmost part of the table shows the difference between each
value of a/a stem and a corresponding value of non-a/a stem (a negative
value means that the final vowel in the non-a/a stem is longer than that
in the a/a stem).

As mentioned above, the tendency to reduce the final vowel in the
nominative forms is observed in both a/a and non-a/a stems. However,
Figure 11 and Table 22 show that the length of the final vowel is
different in these two stem types: the reduction in a/a stems is greater
than in nona/a stems (cf. the nominatives of the CVVCV and CVCVCV
structures in Table 22). There is also a difference between the
speakers: Speaker 1 demonstrates a bigger reduction in a/a stems than
Speaker 2, but in non-a/a stems the situation is the opposite.

Thus, two main parameters that influence the degree of length
reduction in the nominative are the quality of the final vowel (a/a or
non-a/a stem) and the speaker. The structure of the word also plays a
part, but its influence is not crucial (excluding the CVCV structure
where the reduction does not happen). Speaker 1 is slightly more
sensitive to the structure of the word than Speaker 2.

5.2. Reduction of final vowels: a qualitative aspect

Although the analysis presented in this paper is mainly aimed at
the quantitative characteristics of vowels in four case forms, the
distinctions of cases are not necessarily based on the quantity of the
final vowel only.

For this reason I give a brief overview of the qualitative
characteristics of final vowels in Votic: the intensity and formant
structure. My main findings in this field are the following.

1. In the nominative forms, the reduced final vowel that originates
from a is qualitatively different from a.

Table 23 compares the first three formants (19) of four groups of
sounds:

--a in the initial syllable (i.e. a short stressed vowel);

--a in the second syllable of the genitive form (i.e. originally a
long unstressed vowel);

--a in the second syllable of the nominative form in CVCV nouns
(i.e. originally a half-long unstressed vowel)

--e in the second syllable of the nominative form in non-CVCV nouns
(i.e. originally a short unstressed vowel).

Only back-vocalic nouns were used in the experiment. All data were
recorded from Speaker 1.

The only statistically significant difference observed in these
data is the difference between F1 of e and of all other groups (p <
0.001). There is no statistically significant difference either between
any formants of the first three groups or between F2 and F3 of e and of
other groups.

F1 of 3 is lower than that of a, i.e. e is a more closed vowel than
a.

Table 23 also shows that e demonstrates a bigger standard deviation
of formant values (especially for F2) than a. It means that e has a less
stable quality than a.

2. Vowels other than a/a do not demonstrate any evident differences
in the formant values between the nominative and other case forms. As a
test experiment I analysed the formant structure of two vowels in
different positions: (a) o in the second open syllable (e.g. kaivo
'well:GEN/ill' vs kaivo 'well:NOM') and (b) i in the
third open syllable (e.g. pikari 'shot glass:GEN/iLL' vs
pikari 'shot glass:NOM'). The data for Speaker 1 are presented
in Table 24. No statistically significant difference between the vowel
formant values in the nominative form (originally short; subjected to
reduction) and those in the genitive or illative form (originally long;
not subjected to reduction) was found. (20)

3. Another characteristic that hypothetically might be important
for distinguishing reduced and non-reduced vowels is intensity. It
should be noted that analysing intensity is more complicated if compared
with the formant structure or length, because intensity depends both on
the vowel quality and the pronunciation (a louder or quieter
pronunciation will crucially affect the intensity value). For that
reason I calculated the ratio "Mean intensity of the final vowel /
Mean intensity of the previous vowel * 100" in several
pronunciations of the same form. Table 25 lists intensity values for the
nominative, genitive and illative forms of several words (data for
Speaker 2). The last two columns present the results of the statistical
analysis testing the difference in the intensity values between the
nominative and genitive forms and the nominative and illative forms.

As the data in Table 25 show:

--three words demonstrate statistically significant difference
between the intensity values, while four words do not; (21)

--the difference is blurred, i.e. the p-value is never less than
0.001 and sometimes one pair of case forms has the difference while the
other does not;

--in some words the nominative form has a less intensive final
vowel than the genitive and illative forms, but in some words it does
not;

--the standard deviation of intensity values is usually higher in
the nominative than in other forms.

From these results I conclude that intensity is an accessory but by
no means the main feature that distinguishes reduced and non-reduced
vowels in Votic.

5.3. Case syncretism

The data discussed above allow us to draw a picture of case
syncretism in contemporary Votic. (22) The nominative, genitive,
partitive and short illative singular can differ from each other through
one of the following features:

Tables 26 and 27 list noun classes that are distinguished on the
basis of these features. Every class is a unique combination of the
features and corresponds to one line in the tables. Table 26 contains
single-stem nouns (that do not have forms with the consonant stem) and
Table 27 contains two-stem nouns (that have both vocalic and consonant
stems). Combinations that are theoretically possible but not presented
in our corpus of data are shaded grey. For every class of nouns
homonymous forms are marked with an asterisk (if there are two
homonymous pairs of forms in a class, they are marked with one and two
asterisks correspondingly). If there are no asterisks in a row, it means
that there are no homonymous forms in the class. As the reduction of
stem-final vowels other than a/a is not fully stable and sometimes there
is no distinction of full and reduced vowels (see Section 4.6), I marked
potentially syncretic forms with (*). (24)

As seen from Tables 26 and 27, 6 out of 8 classes of single-stem
nouns and 4 out of 9 (or out of 12 theoretically possible) classes of
two-stem nouns contain syncretic forms. Hence, Luuditsa Votic has a
highly developed syncretism of case forms. It is obviously more
pervasive than in Southern Estonian (Grunthal 2010 : 102), and is more
or less comparable with Standard Estonian (Grunthal 2001). It is worth
mentioning that the neighbouring Jogopera variety of Votic has a
different system of syncretism. In Jogopera Votic, there is no reduction
in the nominative forms of nouns ending in a vowel other than a/a (i.e.
types erne-and kaivo-have no difference between the nominative and
genitive). On the other hand, our Jogopera speakers do not usually use
short illative forms, so the illative does not merge with any other case
forms, and this significantly decreases the degree of syncretism.

5.4. Illative

In this section I will briefly discuss specific behaviour of the
illative forms.

As seen from Tables 26 and 27 a short illative takes part in
syncretism more often than other case forms. In three classes of nouns
the illative coincides with the partitive, in four classes with the
genitive and in one class with both of them.

My measurements show much diversity in the behaviour of the
illative form. Here I briefly repeat the findings about the illative
mentioned above:

Type kana-: V1 and C are shorter in the illative than in the
partitive (for all three speakers). This difference is not statistically
significant.

The final vowel in the illative is shorter than in the genitive (it
is statistically significant for Speaker 2 and possibly significant for
Speaker 1).

Type nagna-: V1 and CC are shorter in the illative than in the
nominative, genitive and partitive (for Speakers 1 and 2 but not 3).
This difference is statistically significant for CC (p < 0.001).

Type naiva-: For Speaker 3 the final vowel in the illative is much
longer than in all other case forms.

Type pima-: VI and C are shorter in the illative than in the
nominative, genitive and partitive (for Speaker 2 but not for Speakers 1
and 3). Sometimes this difference is significant (V1 in the nominative
and genitive, C in the nominative), sometimes possibly significant (V1
and C in the partitive), and sometimes not significant (C in the
genitive).

The final vowel in the illative is shorter than in the genitive
(Speaker 2). This difference is possibly significant.

Type vasara-: For Speaker 2 the final vowel in the illative is
shorter than in the genitive (statistically significant) or the
partitive (possibly significant). For Speaker 3 the final vowel in the
illative is longer than in the genitive (possibly significant) and the
partitive (not significant).

Type tano-: The final vowel in the illative is shorter than in the
nominative and genitive (Speakers 1 and 2). This difference is
statistically significant (for the nominative of both speakers and the
genitive of Speaker 2) or possibly significant (for the genitive of
Speaker 1).

Type kaivo-: The final vowel in the illative is shorter than in the
genitive for both Speakers (this difference is not statistically
significant).

Type pikari-: For Speaker 2 the final vowel in the illative is
longer than in the genitive. This difference is possibly significant.

The resulting picture is rather difficult to interpret from the
phonological point of view. On the one hand, there are too many
deviations to be ignored. On the other hand, there is no consistency in
these deviations, so the whole picture is rather blurred.

Still, several generalizations can be made.

The tendency to shorten some segments in the illative forms was
observed for Speakers 1 and 2 but not for Speaker 3. There is possibly a
correlation between this fact and the fact that in my corpus there are
both short and long illative forms recorded from Speakers 1 and 2 but
only short illative forms recorded from Speaker 3. It is likely that for
Speakers 1 and 2 the short illative form is a shortened long form, i.e.
it is a result of dropping the final -se/-se marker. The average length
of the stem-final vowel in long illative forms is 85 ms (standard
deviation--13 ms) for Speaker 1 and 77 ms (standard deviation = 12 ms)
for Speaker 2. It means that this vowel is definitely short, unlike in
the examples from Ariste 1968 where this vowel is always long.

Speaker 3 does not use long illative forms, and probably for him
the short illative form is not a result of the shortening. I would
rather suspect an Ingrian influence here: in Ingrian the short form is
the main form (25) of the illative. This hypothesis is supported by the
fact that Speaker 3 was born in the Luuditsa village while Speakers 1
and 2 were born in Liivtsula (as mentioned above, the Ingrian influence
was stronger in Luuditsa than in Liivtsula). However, this hypothesis
can explain only the shorter length of the final vowel but not that of
the other segments in illative forms.

Another hypothesis concerning the illative is that the language is
developing a mechanism to avoid too much syncretism in case forms. As
was mentioned in Section 5.3, in many classes of nouns short illative
forms coincide with some other case form. In such a situation an attempt
to distinguish the short illative from other forms does not look
surprising. If this is the case, the process is in its initial stage,
and thus we can observe only some inconsistent variation in the length
of different segments.

5.5. Foot isochrony

The described variation in the illative obscures the question about
foot isochrony in contemporary Votic. The CVCV words should be the most
illustrative in this respect. They have a single consonant in the
nominative and genitive and a geminate in the partitive and illative, so
if the length of the final vowel is the same in all these forms, it
means that there is no foot isochrony; but if the final vowel in the
partitive and illative is shorter, one may speak about a tendency
towards foot isochrony.

However, the data are contradictory: the kana-type does not
demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the length of
V2 in the genitive and partitive. Judging by this data, the foot is not
isochronic. However, the difference between the length of V2 in the
genitive and illative is statistically significant (Table 2).

In the tano-type (Table 13), the data show significant (Speaker 1)
and possibly significant (Speaker 2) differences between the genitive
and illative, while the partitive form cannot be compared as it has a
final diphthong.

There are two possible interpretations of this situation:

a) there is a tendency towards foot isochrony in contemporary Votic
but the partitive form is abnormal for some unknown reason (so the final
vowel in the partitive is longer than it should be), or

b) there is no foot isochrony and the shorter final vowel is a
specific feature of the illative forms.

In the structures other than CVCV foot isochrony can be manifested
by the changes in the length of other segments: the penultimate vowel
and/or the consonant. Since in the nominative the final vowel is shorter
than in other case forms, we can expect that the preceding consonant
and/or penultimate vowel are longer. The data show that there is no
consistent lengthening of the consonant in the nominative vs other
cases, but the situation with the penultimate vowel is rather tricky.
Table 28 presents the difference between the lengths of this vowel in
the nominative and other case forms (a positive value means that in the
nominative the vowel is longer) and indicates its statistical
significance.

It is clearly seen that in most cases (excluding the kana-type) the
difference is positive. This means that the nominative has a longer
penultimate vowel than the genitive, partitive or illative, and this
shows a tendency towards foot isochrony. The negative values for the
kana-type (where the final vowel in the nominative is longer than in
other case forms) indicate the same tendency. (26) On the other hand, in
most cases the difference is not statistically significant or just
possibly significant. Pairs where the penultimate vowel is significantly
longer in the nominative than in other cases are rare and specific for a
particular speaker (e.g. types pima-and vasara-for Speaker 2). From that
point of view, foot isochrony is more typical for Speaker 2 and less
typical for Speaker 1. It also seems that disyllabic nouns that have a
long vowel or a diphthong in the initial syllable demonstrate a higher
tendency towards foot isochrony than other types.

However, the general picture is the same as shown by the length of
final vowels in CVCV words (cf. the beginning of this section): there
are only vague traces of foot isochrony in contemporary Votic.

5.6. Transcription and orthography

The phonetic phenomena discussed above are tightly connected with
the question of transcription and orthography. (27)

It is evident that the contemporary Votic language is different
from the language described in Ariste (1968) (due to both dialectal
variation and innovations). This poses a problem for the researchers
used to the "classic" Votic transcription (i.e. as in
Ariste's grammar), because this transcription does not suit the
contemporary data very well.

Figure 12 plots the range of vowel lengths (28) depending on the
position of the vowel (stressed in the initial syllable vs non-stressed
final), the structure of the noun (CVCV or not) and the original length
of the vowel (short vs long). The duration range (from the minimum to
the maximum length) is indicated for six types of vowels:

--originally long non-stressed vowel in the final position (e.g.
naiv a < naiva 'ship:GEN');

--originally half-long non-stressed vowel in the final position
(e.g. kana < kana 'fish:NOM');

--originally short non-stressed vowel other than a/a in the final
position (e.g. kaivo < kaivo 'well:NOM');

--originally short non-stressed a/a in the final position (e.g.
naiva < naiva 'ship:NOM').

The vowels that are long according to Ariste's system of
transcription are marked in black, and short vowels are marked in grey.
It can be clearly seen that Ariste's system does not suit the
contemporary Votic vowels very well. The main problem is that in the
final position the originally half-long vowel has practically the same
length as the originally long vowel. (29)

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

I propose two variants by which one might adapt Ariste's
system to contemporary Votic data. The first is to introduce the long
final vowel instead of the originally half-long. This means that in
words of CVCV structure the final vowel will be long in all four case
forms, e.g. kana 'fish:NOM/gen' and kanna
'fish:PART/ill'. This variant has minimal differences from
Ariste's system but it has two serious weak points. First, the
short a/a in the final syllable has a completely different quality than
the short a/a in other positions (see Section 5.2). Second, a long vowel
in the initial syllable and a long vowel in the last syllable have
crucially different lengths. As a result, a transcription based on such
phonological interpretation is not intuitive. it would also not be
welcomed by the native speakers with whom i discussed possible variants
to the Votic orthography. (30)

The second variant is to replace all the originally long vowels in
noninitial syllables with short vowels, and introduce reduced vowels as
a new phonological unit that has replaced originally short vowels. A
positive side to this variant is that it corresponds to contemporary
Votic phonetics much better. However, the phonological system becomes
more complicated as a new row of reduced vowels is added. (31)

Table 29 illustrates both proposed variants.

To make the picture more thorough it is worth comparing
contemporary Votic data with experimental data presented in Ariste 1942.
Unfortunately these sets of data are not fully comparable, as there are
several differences between Ariste's and my experiment. In
particular, most of Ariste's samples were recorded as separate
words uttered as an answer to a question --in such utterances, it is
likely that the absolute length of vowels is longer than if the word
were uttered as a part of a sentence. There is also no exact
correspondence between the structures analysed in Ariste 1942 and in the
current paper. Table 30 compares several nouns that were analysed in
Ariste 1942 and sets of nouns with the corresponding structure from
contemporary Votic. The length of the final vowel is given in
milliseconds (in the contemporary Votic data I give the length
separately for every speaker). The third column of the table contains
comments concerning the length of the final vowel in contemporary Votic
as compared with Ariste's data.

As seen form Table 30, Speaker 3 does not show any significant
differences when compared with Ariste's speaker: the former has
slightly longer final vowels in types pima (nom) and kana (nom) but a
shorter vowel in nagna (nom). Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 have shorter final
vowels than Ariste's speaker in most types (nagna (nom), pima
(nom), kana (gen) and pollu (nom)) though not in types kaivo (nom) and
kana (nom). Thus, in general contemporary Luuditsa Votic demonstrates a
stronger quantitative reduction of the short final vowel but with some
exceptions.

The strongest difference is found in the genitive forms with a long
final vowel. Unfortunately, siga is the only such form in Ariste's
data and from my point of view it is not enough from which to draw
definite conclusions about the length of the long final vowels. There is
also a form metsa 'forest:GEN' in Ariste's data but it is
not clear how it should be interpreted: in the test sentences it is
presented as a genitive form in the word combination metsa pu
'forest:GEN tree' (Ariste 1942 : 37) while later Ariste
considers a trisyllabic word metsa pu (Ariste 1942 : 46). In any case
the length of a in metsa is significantly shorter than a in siga (165 vs
225 ms).

There is one more example of a genitive form in Ariste's data,
naizikuo 'woman:GEN' where the final diphthong length is 102.5
ms. This form was recorded in the word combination naizikuo pa
'woman's head'. According to Ariste's grammar, this
form should contain a long final vowel: naiziko (compare with ahvako
'perch:GEN' (Ariste 1968 : 47)). As Ariste's samples
contain also the nominative form of the same word (naizikko), it is
possible to compare the lengths of the short and long vowels in a
trisyllabic structure. The difference is only 20 ms: 102.5 ms in
naizikuo 'woman:GEN' and 82.5 ms in naizikko
'woman:NOM'.

In any case, Ariste 1942 has too few measurements to draw general
conclusions. The example of pata 'pot:NOM' where Ariste
carried out two experiments and got very different results (107.5 vs
152.5 ms) shows that the variation in the length of the final vowel can
be very pronounced. (32)

6. Conclusions

The acoustic analysis of data has shown that contemporary Luuditsa
Votic demonstrates a number of differences from the "classic"
Votic described by Ariste. The most important difference that concerns
not only phonetics but also phonology and morphology is the loss of the
distinction between long and half-long vowels (the latter were
traditionally considered as phonologically short). As a result the
nominative and genitive forms of nouns with the CVCV structure are
homonymous, while the partitive and short illative differ from them with
respect to the longer consonant (but not the longer final vowel).

In other structures the opposition of long and short vowels is
generally preserved but it can be lost in some forms of a particular
idiolect. In any case, there are some deviations from the original
system:

--in non-initial syllables the long vowels have become
significantly shorter, while the decrease in length of short vowels is
less consistent;

--originally short a/a have changed in both quality and quantity,
while other vowels have preserved their quality and decreased in
quantity to a lesser extent.

There is a need to adapt the "classic" Votic
transcription system to the contemporary data. However, there is no one
variant which solves all the issues, because the Votic phonological
system is in a state of flux. One of the proposed variants which might
enhance the phonological system would be to introduce a number of
reduced vowels.

The described changes in the phonetics and phonology also affect
Votic morphology, namely the syncretism of cases. Contemporary Votic
demonstrates a tendency towards developing more syncretism, which is
quite typical for southern Finnic languages.

MapKyc E. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 2011, [TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Tom I. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].

Address

Fedor Rozhanskiy

University of Tartu and Institute of Linguistics of the Russian
Academy of Sciences

E-mail: handarey@yahoo.com

* The research was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant
IUT2-37, and the Russian Foundation for Humanities, project
12-04-00168a.

(1) Monosyllabic nouns have a specific marker of the short illative
form: so 'marsh:NOM'--sohho 'marsh:ILL', tu
'work:NOM'--tuhhe 'work:ILL'. The long Illative form
is marked with -se/-se. In Luuditsa Votic, long and short illative forms
vary without any evident restrictions. In spontaneous speech, the short
form is more frequent.

(2) Apart from the vowel length, in Section 5.2 I discuss intensity
and formant structure as potential additional cues to the opposition of
cases. Hypothetically, there might be some other suprasegmental features
that distinguish the case forms under discussion; however, nothing like
this was mentioned by previous researchers, and thus the presence of
such features is unlikely.

(3) Excluding the partitive forms, which have the marker-ta or end
in a diphthong formed by the final vowel of the stem and the partitive
marker-a/-a.

(4) Here and below the following system of symbols is used to
describe the phonetic structure of a form: C--consonant, C--geminate, CC
or CCC--consonant cluster, V--vowel, 'V--long vowel, VV--diphthong.

(5) Vaipooli varieties, or the Western Votic dialect, were spoken
in Jogopera, Liivtsula, Luuditsa and Rajo villages. Tsvetkov 1995,
Arpahat 2007 and Mapkyc [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] 2011 are based
on data from this dialect. The grammar (Ahlqvist 1856) uses data from
the Kattila variety (Cental Votic dialect). Ariste' grammar (1968)
is based on material from the Central Votic dialect (Kattila and
neighbouring villages), though some data from the Jogopera variety are
also presented. For more about the revised system of Votic dialects see
MycnHMOB 2005, Ernits 2005 : 77-79 and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
2011 : 17-19.

(6) Reduction is not a recent phenomenon in the westernmost Votic
varieties. Mustonen (1883 : 165) already described the reduction of the
final vowel in fast speech as a specific feature of these varieties that
makes them similar to Estonian and southern Finnic dialects. He also
noted that unlike in the Kattila variety, there is no lengthening of the
final vowel in the genitive form in Jogopera and Luuditsa. However,
Mustonen's transcription of Luuditsa texts does not suggest
definite conclusion on the degree of reduction and on the comparative
length of vowels in different forms. Along with homonymous forms vana
'old:NOM' and vana 'old:GEN' that fully correspond
to the contemporary pronunciation, we find, for example, identical forms
like Jumala 'God:NOM' and Jumala 'God:GEN'. If such
forms had been truly homonymous in the end of the 19th century, they
could not have given different reflexes (Jumana vs Jumana) in the
contemporary language.

(7) It is not clear why nehgon 'I chop' is listed among
words of this type.

(8) Ariste (1942) indicated the length of segments in hundredths of
a second, but for this paper all the data were converted into
milliseconds.

(9) There are other examples of syncretism in Luuditsa Votic:
merging of the allative and adessive singular and the homonymy of the
genitive and illative plural. As these cases do not involve the problem
of vowel length directly, they are not discussed in this paper.

(10) This variety belongs to the Western Votic dialect.

(11) Here and below the question mark is used to denote the
ambiguous length of the final vowel.

(12) I name the structures according to the vocalic stem of a noun.

(13) I assume that if a polysyllabic word distinguishes some
phonetic opposition, this opposition should also exist in disyllabic
words while the opposite is not true: an opposition existing in
dissyllabic words is not necessarily present in words consisting of more
than two syllables.

(14) Mistakes in agreement are very rare in the speech of the Votic
speakers and do not appear in such simple constructions.

(15) See discussion of this problem in Chelliah, de Reuse 2011 :
255.

(16) In the neighbouring Ingrian language the situation is
completely different (see Markus 2011).

(17) The same applies to all other structures analysed in sections
3.3--3.5.

(18) See section 5.5 for the additional analysis of V1 length.

(19) The formant values were measured in the middle of the vowel
duration.

(20) It should be mentioned that a recent experimental study
(Brodskaya 2014) based on my Votic dataset showed a significant
difference in the quality of long and short i in the initial syllable.

(21) I do not have enough data to define why the last four words do
not demonstrate the difference. It is not clear whether there is a
correlation with the structure or with the quality of the final vowel
(three of four words are trisyllabic with stem-final i) or whether it is
just a coincidence.

(22) As already mentioned, I analyse only the nominative, genitive,
partitive and short illative singular.

(24) It means that such forms would coincide with some other forms
of the same noun, if the distinction between the reduced and full vowel
(other than a/a) was lost.

(25) It means that the short illative form is obligatory in most
paradigmatic classes.

(26) It is interesting that unlike in the kana-type there are no
negative values in the tano-type.

(27) I am grateful to Heinike Heinsoo for inspiring discussions on
Votic orthography.

(28) In Figure 12 I used data from Speakers 1 and 2 for the reason
mentioned in (4) in Section 3.6.

(29) This process is not unique to Votic. In neighbouring Soikkola
Ingrian we observe a similar tendency, or even to a greater extent--the
originally long vowels became shorter than the originally half-long
vowels (Markus 2011 : 110).

(30) It is worth mentioning here an experiment made by Mehmed
Muslimov with Lower Luga Ingrian speakers (the shortening of the final
vowels in this Ingrian dialect is very similar to Votic). Among several
suggested variants to the orthography the variant with long final vowels
was completely rejected by the speakers (the only exception was a
speaker of the Parspaa variety where the shortening of the final vowels
did not take place).

(31) It does not mean that a possible Votic orthography should
contain the whole set of the reduced vowels: the orthography can be
simpler than the phonological transcription. I will not discuss this
question in detail as development of a Votic orthography is a
complicated problem that is beyond the scope of the current paper.

(32) Ariste does not explain the reason for conducting two
experiments with pata and how these experiments were organized. Usually
in each experiment every form was pronounced by the native speaker from
4 to 8 times (Ariste 1942 : 36).